A huge proportion of exports maybe.
Not all goods had their prices inflated by tariffs, of course, but those tariffs fell on all consumers and not just those in the South. If the North consumed proportionate amount pf those protected goods, as they consumed the bulk of imports, then it could be said that the tariff hit all regions equally could it not?
Hardly. The North consumed goods it produced providing jobs for its own masses. The South was in effect paying tariff on that portion of the imports from the North whose prices were higher because of the tariff. As the Daily Chicago Times reportedly put it at the time:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff [the Morrill Tariff] that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
I've got to go back to work, so I'll be off line for a while. Catch you later.
And I certainly do not dispute that. Everything I've read supports the fact that Southern cotton, tobacco, etc. made up the large majority of U.S. exports.
The North consumed goods it produced providing jobs for its own masses. The South was in effect paying tariff on that portion of the imports from the North whose prices were higher because of the tariff.
I cannot see how that can be true. Say I sell a cotton gin, and the tariff allows me to sell it for 30% more than I could without it, then I would agree that the tariff placed an unfair burden on the south. It was, after all, a regional product. But say I manufacture an item that can be imported and sold for $10. The tariff is placed on the item so the import costs $15 and I can now sell mine for $14 and clean up. But I sell that item for $14 regardless of where they are. And if one third of my goods are sold in the South and two thirds sold in the rest of the country then the tariff cannot be said to fall disproportionately on the South. The tariff screwed consumers equally. Both regions were faced with the same choice, pay more for import or an inflated price for domestic.